SciFi Art Now

SciFi Art Now is a book collecting some of the best in contemporary science fiction art by a wide range of creators. The book, edited by John Freeman, includes an introduction by the legendary Chris Foss and is on sale now in all good bookshops.

Monday, 28 April 2014

After 14 years of business British independent publishers Telos have regenerated their website, a move coinciding with several new title announcements.

"It was time for a change," explains Publishing Director David J Howe.

Telos Publishing specialises in horror and media titles. Recent books include The Abominable Snowman by Robert Rankin, featuring the return of Barry the Time Travelling Sprout; and Jinx Town by Sam Stone - an epic sci-fi horror novel from this favourite author.

"The original site had served us well for many years," David continues, "but the world of online sales has moved on and we needed to catch up!"

The new site combines a simple interface with details of all Telos' catalogue of titles, and even allows for flash sales and discounts to be made available.

"One of the issues with the original site was that we couldn't easily offer discounts without extensive coding work," says David. "But the new site allows us to be flexible and to present sales and offers across our range, whenever we want."

Telos' catalogue has grown since the company's inception to now feature over 140 titles. They specialise in guides to a variety of cult television and film series, but also have a growing fiction catalogue, including works from authors such as Simon Clark, Graham Masterton, Mike Ripley, Hank Janson, Andrew Hook, Sam Stone and many others.

New titles for 2014 include an extensive guide to The Avengers television series, Crime novels from Priscilla Masters, Horror and fantasy fiction from Helen McCabe, Rhys Hughes and Sam Stone, and the new The Abominable Showmannovel from Robert Rankin. They even have some Erotica and Romance titles in the mix, so there really is something for everyone.

The Telos site can be found at www.telos.co.uk, and there are sale offers across all the ranges, with some titles being as low as 99 pence.

"We decided to reduce the prices across all the ranges," says David, "where the books had been available for some time, or where we had fairly high stock levels remaining."

Hopefully this means that buyers can pick up some bargains, whether from our well-received Time Hunter series - which spun-off from their Doctor Who fiction range - or across their Horror novels and novellas - where titles by authors like Stephen Gallagher, Steve Savile, George Mann and T M Wright can be snapped up.

Comprising elements of the avant-garde, science fiction, cutting-edge hip-hop, black comix, and graphic novels, Afrofuturism spans both underground and mainstream pop culture.
With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and all social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

Author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore.
From the SF literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler and N K Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, topics range from the "alien" experience of blacks in America to the "wake up" cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism.

Interviews with rappers, composers, musicians, singers, authors, comic illustrators, painters, and DJs, as well as Afrofuturist professors, provide a firsthand look at this fascinating movement.

With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

Cover artist John Jennings, an educator at the University of Buffalo, centres his life on provocative questions: How can we show the work of underrepresented artists, especially those who do comics? How can we go beyond the racial stereotypes of traditional comic art to show the rich expression of black artists, past and present? And how can we help UB students see that creating art is a possibility for them, to recognize that “art is everywhere” and acquire what Jennings calls “visual literacy?”

Friday, 3 January 2014

Ships are disappearing all over the world and it believed to be caused by a sea monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, author of the book The Mysteries of the Ocean Deep, his companion Conseil and Canadian harpooner Ned Land are hired by the US government to help put and end to this mystery by joining an expedition on the Abraham Lincoln. After months of searching the Abraham Lincoln finds its quarry and in the ensuing collision, Professor Aronnax, Conseil and Ned Land are thrown overboard. In their efforts to survive, the trio find themselves on the surface of the “monster” itself, which turns out to be a submarine. Captain Nemo allows them to remain alive on board his submarine, the Nautilus, as his permanent guests, meaning he will never allow them to leave and reveal his secrets. The Captain uses this meeting with Professor Aronnax, whose book he has read, to begin a new cruise through the oceans and seas of the world, so that he can show Professor Aronnax where his book was lacking in details; meanwhile, Ned Land’s primary interest is in escape...

My enjoyment of science fiction is as much about the words as the pictures that draw my attention to a book on a store shelf or online shop front. For over 120 years, readers of English have known only a poor imitation of Jules Verne's classic French novel Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - and consequently relegated the writer to the category of a "boy's author". Since 1873 the standard English version has been Lewis Mercier's mangled "translation," a work that's filled with errors, mistranslations, and bogus additions, and missing nearly a quarter of Verne's original text.

Thanks to the life-long efforts of two Verne scholars, Walter J. Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, the English-speaking world gained access to a definitive and highly recommended translation in 1993, the only English version based solely on the level of literary artist and scientific visionary, a category he has always enjoyed in Europe and Russia.

Mercier's act of literary vandalism went unnoticed until 1965, when New York University English professor Walter Miller discovered the missing text and began the restoration of the Verne masterpiece. After nearly thirty years of work, including rigorous examinations of his translation by experts in marine technology and biology, Miller teamed that Frederick Paul Walter in 1992 to create this landmark scientific and literary achievement.

While the cover of this much-praised translation is pretty dull, to be honest, restored to the volume along with the original woodcut illustrations are the entertaining and often prescient drams of Captain Nemo, widely considered the prototypical science-fiction character.

In this novel alone Verne has anticipated submarine diving planes, scuba gear, underwater laboratories, and marine ecological disasters. He also inspired large-scale underwater mining and farming of flora and fauna, and electricity from thermoclines, all currently in development.

Restoration of these visionary ideas and some twenty-three percent of the original text is certain to elevate Verne's standing in scientific and literary circles.

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, published by the US Naval Institute, is available from amazon.co.uk

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About Sci-Fi Art Now

Sci-Fi Art Now is a book collecting some of the best in contemporary science fiction art by a wide range of creators. The book, edited by John Freeman, includes an introduction by the legendary Chris Foss, published in the UK by ILEX and in the US by Harper Collins.

A full list of artists featured, together with links to their web sites, appears below.

Chris Foss

Chris Foss provides the introduction for Sci-Fi Art Now, an artist who has had an immense impact on our collective vision of the future down the years, as cover artist for many SF books written by authors such as Harry Harrison, Philip K Dick, Isaac Asimov and E.E. 'Doc' Smith'; and his design work for films such as Alien and Superman.